He's more machine now than man

Things change as we get older; we all know that. Our habits are different. Our styles are different. We party less and plan more, and we learn an entirely new vocabulary – phrases like “automatic withdrawal,” and “I should probably stop at three Heinekens.” If we’re lucky, we see the age at which our biology changes, with tufts of hair growing in absurd places, and weird pockets of wrinkled skin that look like rhinoceros necks. Makes bar pickups a little more difficult, but hey, that’s the breaks.

 

It’s this bodily degeneration that we look forward to the least, and with good reason. Not only does it make the little things more difficult – like bending over to sort through gummy bears on aisle six – but our health care becomes more complex. We’re introduced to machines and gizmos that look as though they’re designed to pump milk from the udders of obstinate cows, and every procedure becomes suddenly invasive. It’s like we’re the unwitting test subjects aboard a ship of perverted aliens.

 

This was one of many thoughts I had during my recent MRI. I had time to think plenty of them, because an MRI is a lengthy ordeal, and not particularly pleasant – the medical equivalent of an art house documentary about the invention of perforated toilet paper.

 

I walked into the radiology wing not knowing what to expect, exactly. Over the phone, they warned me not to wear pants with metal buttons or zippers, so I showed up clad in jet black sweatpants, which right away made me feel somewhat diminished. Nobody with self-respect walks into a building wearing sweatpants and feels good about themselves, especially is said building is crawling with professionals who frequent golf courses and get their shoes shined. There I was in the waiting room, surrounded by doctors with fancy hybrid cars and watches that monitor stock prices, decked out in a Metallica shirt and the kind of trousers you wear while eating ice cream in front of “The Maury Povich Show.”

 

It was seeing the machine for the first time that made me feel truly displaced, though. Any Star Wars geeks out there? There’s a scene in “The Empire Strikes Back” in which the morally ambiguous rebel Han Solo gets lowered into a metal chamber, where he’s suspended in a fictional alloy called carbonite. It’s similar to being cryogenically frozen, only way cooler. The MRI machine is like a sideways version of that whimsical sci-fi doohickey: a big gleaming tube that you slide into with the help of a noisy, mechanized tray. There was a brief moment when I thought I’d enter this drainpipe-looking monstrosity and emerge sometime in the distant future, surrounded by talking robots retrofitted from old Ford Broncos.

 

Earlier in the week, the woman I spoke to at the hospital said it would be a good idea to bring some music; I figured the suggestion was meant to spare me  boredom, seeing as how an MRI takes about 45 minutes – 50, if you want it to recite your horoscope. Having a nostalgic affinity for mid-90’s technology, I dug out an old portable CD player and rooted through my disc collection, looking for a mix that was on the mellow side. My thought – which seemed brilliant to me at the time – was that if I had to lie perfectly still for that long, I didn’t want any music that would inspire headbanging, limb thrashing, or Tarzan-esque chest-pounding. Better, I reckoned, to bring along tunes that would chill me out, inspire a state of relaxation. The Eagles and Pink Floyd were in. Megadeth and Slayer? As fun as it would have been to blast “Set the World Afire” in a clinical setting, they, sadly, were out.

 

Turns out this was a mistake.

 

The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the noise. Oh, the noise. The eardrum-shattering, brain-splitting, shoot-me-in-the-head-with-a-bazooka robot noise. As first I thought some hidden nuclear reactor on site was having a spastic malfunction, and I frankly wouldn’t have been surprised had I wrested myself from my mechanized confines and seen men and women in airtight hazard suits throwing buckets of water on glowing fuel rods. I quickly discovered this is just an MRI’s base soundtrack, a John Williams score from hell. 

 

The tones kept changing. Three minutes of blaring beeps, two minutes of booming boops, and so on, in an ever-changing auditory assault. The evolving sound patterns were a blessing in a sense, because if they had remained constant for 40 minutes, they’d have shredded my sanity like so much grated cheese; I’d have walked out of the hospital a babbling ninny, walking an imaginary dog and singing choice numbers from the musical “South Pacific.”

 

That was when I realized the mistake in my music selection. The MRI noises were an incongruous accompaniment to the honeyed tones of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” – better if I had gone with Megadeth after all, or some other tunage abrasive enough to cut through the cacophony. An undiscovered group that uses chainsaws and jackhammers as musical instruments, perhaps.

 

Strangely, the whole experience wasn’t as off-putting as the details may imply. That may be an odd thing to say after making the ordeal seem about as appealing as a punch in the teeth from Zeus, but it’s true. My ability to get through it intact was due mainly to the technicians and staff, who, simply put, were fantastic; they were helpful, understanding, and seemingly concerned with my well-being. If you’re going to spend the length of a “Mad Men” episode getting beamed up by Scottie, it helps to have a good team looking after you.

 

The results of the MRI weren’t as conclusive as I’d have liked; more tests may follow, depending on how things go. But next time, I’ll be prepared. Heavy tunes, gym pants, and a T-shirt without skulls on it will carry me through; I guess I’ll file this one under “live and learn.”

 

What’s scary is that, as I get older, medical technology will only get more advanced. Will these tests be performed by ever-smaller machines – an iPhone-sized MRI wand, perhaps? Or will they grow to obscene proportions? If ever I saunter into radiology and see a contraption the size of an army tank, I’m bolting.